Indian Women’s Golf Continues to Rise
From emerging champions on the domestic tour to growing international opportunities, March 2026 highlighted the continued rise of women’s professional golf in India.
March, often considered the finest golfing season in North India, did not disappoint the golfing fraternity.
The Hero Women’s Professional Golf Tour witnessed an exciting new champion at the challenging DLF Golf & Country Club, where young amateur Lavanya Gupta stunned a highly experienced field with a commanding victory.
Meanwhile, Riddima Dilawari, continuing her impressive form, secured her third win in six events this season at Jaypee Greens Wish Town. With this consistent performance, she now leads the Hero Order of Merit by a margin of over ₹2 lakhs. Indian women golfers also continued to make their mark internationally, delivering strong performances in Australia on the Ladies European Tour.
As our players continue to grow in confidence and stature, it is equally important to reflect on the future. The future indeed belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. In every challenge lies an opportunity, and this is especially true for girls in sport. It is imperative that young girls are encouraged to pursue not only participation in sport, but also the possibility of building a career through it.
With the introduction of golf leagues and expanding global opportunities, sport is increasingly becoming a viable and respected career pathway in India. The Indian Golf Premier League (IGPL) is now offering WGAI players the opportunity to compete at world-class international venues in South Africa, Congo, and Mauritius this April.
When I was a young teenager, there were very few women and girls playing the game at the national level. Some of my earliest memories are of competing against women in saris. At the time, golf was largely perceived as a sport for older women, shaped by the social traditions of club culture and inherited from the British era, when it was associated with refinement, status, and leisure among civil servants and traders’ families. It was, in many ways, a limited and exclusive sport.
The Women’s Golf Association of India (WGAI) was envisioned with the larger purpose of changing that narrative-to transform golf into a genuine career sport for Indian women and girls, and to build the pathway that has brought us to where we stand today.
The launch of the Hero Women’s Golf Tour and our flagship international event, the Hero Women’s Indian Open, in 2006 marked a defining moment in that journey. Since then, nurturing girls in golf and encouraging them to take up the game professionally has remained one of our most important objectives.
Golf’s presence at three successive Olympic Games — Rio, Tokyo, and Paris — has further strengthened the sport’s global profile. Indian stars such as Aditi Ashok and Diksha Dagar have showcased the talent, resilience, and calibre of Indian women golfers on the world stage. Their performances have proven that Indian players can compete with the best on the LPGA and Ladies European Tour circuits.
In the years that followed, several WGAI players earned qualification to the Ladies European Tour, and this sustained progress has encouraged more than 100 young women over the past several years to pursue golf as a career. Today, nearly 70 Indian female professional golfers have successfully come through the qualifying process and chosen to make a profession out of the sport.
Looking ahead to the 2028 Olympic Games, golf will introduce an exciting new format in addition to the individual medal events-a Mixed Doubles competition featuring 16 country pairs. The event will include both alternate shot and four-ball formats. This addition is expected to be highly competitive, and both Indian men and women golfers will need to qualify through a two-year Olympic points system beginning in June 2026.
The future of Indian women in sport-and particularly in golf-looks increasingly secure, with greater opportunities opening up both nationally and internationally. The game itself is also evolving, with indoor formats, technology-led training, and classroom-based learning shaping the future for the next generation of players.
April may be a relatively quieter month on the domestic calendar, but Indian stars Pranavi Urs, Diksha Dagar, Avani Prashanth, and Aditi Ashok will be seen in action at the Aramco event in Las Vegas in the first week of April.
Women’s golf in India continues to move forward with purpose, promise, and pride.
By Champika N. Sayal
Secretary General
Women’s Golf Association of India
1 April 2026
